There is evil and there’s *evil*.
The folks under the Black Mountain were bad, but they were still capable of maintaining a semi-functional society.
In contrast, the Rannites are idiotic users who want to rip the world apart and make it bleed for the greater glory of Ranna.
So there’s a difference. And Bob had to learn it. And now the Rannites need to learn that it is unwise to anger a Beholder by treating him like a mook on a leash.
Lawful Evil is bad, but they can have a functional society with the necessary rules required so that a society can function, although power and wealth therefore only resides in the hands of the very few, and while there is Law, there is probably little Justice.
Neutral Evil can fake it, and function in Lawful society, if breaking the rules whenever it suits them and they think they can get away with it. An entire Neutral Evil society is debatable, perhaps on a small scale where a few strong leaders can keep relative order, but on a large scale would be too self-serving and unreliable to work.
Chaotic Evil. Some people just want to watch the world burn. This was always a mistake with the original Drow in D&D, a CE society simply cannot exist. There can be a bunch of CE people, but its not a society, its a mad house. It would be anarchy the entire time, everyone for themsleves, with relatively small groups held together by a strong leader that would prey on weaker groups and occasionally fight with other groups (they did kind of portray that with the Drow houses, but it was still far too organized for proper CE). These leaders would have to always be watching their back, because someone is always ready to stick a knife in it so they will be top dog. Honestly, finding a large number of CE people in one place would be unlikely as they would probably kill each other.
Of course in reality, people don’t fit into 9 neat little ethical pigeon holes, you can be a complete psychopath that runs an orderly society (more than a few tyrants have been). And most of any people will fall into some sort of neutral middle ground (I liked the 4th edition Unaligned for that) where they aren’t bad people, or good people, just people that just want to mind their own business and not attract attention to themselves.
Indeed, Ørjan, I can’t imagine the Rannites would kill Gren. That which compels a beholder to serve against his will is far too useful to discard, until such time as she no longer serves this purpose.
Even so, I think they just overplayed their hand.
Bob was restraining himself with a supreme effort of will … and now the Rannites are trying to double down. A mistake, I fancy.
I hope you’re right, Aebliss. While I think Bob could take out most Rannites in a ‘fair fight,’ they aren’t really the fighting-fair types…and their goddess is a scary force indeed. I’m not disagreeing, necessarily…just moderating my hopes, and worrying for Bob.
It seems that beholders in this setting are not all that smart, perhaps because they are so powerful that they got lazy, intellectually. Bob has often shown that he doesn’t really think things through.
But… there are moments when he has been canny like beholders are in canonical fantasy settings.
Which is why if Rich decides that Bob has a trick or three up his sleeve, I can roll with it as much as if he was gullible enough to believe they would uphold their end of the deal.
If *you* expect, after 3252 strips, that Bob will think rationally in this situation, and work every angle out logically like he’s Tommy in Miller’s Crossing, then the problem is not Bob.
Indeed (and so vividly put, to boot!). Bob is rather an innocent, in many ways…and even as I mourn for the choices he’s made, I mourn for what the choices he made must be doing to him.
C’rhynne hated her ultimatum, but chose with her conscience….and chose to remain herself, in the face of horrors. It’s a very debatable point, I grant…but I like to think that she passed the Kobayashi Maru, in the same way that Bob…just failed it.
This is, I think, the true face of Ranna, manifest. The crucifixions and endless night are just set dressing; Ranna and her chosen violate people through carefully-crafted situations in which one is sorely tempted to accept "the lesser of evils," committed personally at cost to the self. The self is slowly eroded, compromised, violated and withered away, one "But it was for the greater good" at a time.
This is going to leave a mark on Bob, and I think he’s one of the souls least ready to carry a wound like this. I mourn.
Yet, from what Rich has said, Bob is not limited to what he can do with his eyes. It’s not just petrification, or blasting to dust. I suspect that Bob is relying on Meegs not knowing just what Beholders can do, and so hoping to bluff Snierr into thinking he did as ordered, and would be able to get Gren released.
This was his way of trying to do what C’rhyyne tried to do. What tripped Bob up, though, was being evil he tried to do the evil thing, thinking that would give him the outcome he wanted. C’rhyyne realized that trying to do evil to placate evil was not going to work, did good and to hell with the consequences. Admittedly, it could very well have worked out for the worse for C’rhyyne and friends, but, thankfully, and thank you Rich, it didn’t.
What Bob’s reaction will be to Snierr will be interesting. And possibly very nasty.
It’s such an insidious game the Rannites play, isn’t it? "Come now, any *reasonable* person can see that the least horrible option is compliance. Your conscience can rest easy; you did the least evil thing, see?" But that’s not the real nature of the game. It’s that they made *you* do it, and the weight of that choice is on *your* conscience…not theirs. It’s the effect that choice will have upon you that’s the real victory. Demoralizing you slowly, as you watch the person you thought you were, dismantled and sold piecemeil in the name of tiny little victories. Tiny victories that, in hindsight, will seem so small, and so meaningless, compared to what they cost.
Then, of course, the Rannites can violate the imagined "deal" that they never truly agreed to honor, at the end…reminding you that you’re the one with those broken ideas like "we had a deal" and "deals are to be honored"…and your ruin, your loss, your problem, boss!
I’m quietly impressed, if horrified, with Ranna’s methods. She is well and truly ideologically evil, and a force of ideological evil. She is there to tell you that "love" is the lie that the weak tell themselves to cover up supplicating dependence on the strength of others, that "law" is simply the will of the strongest in action, and the idea that law binds the strong is a pipe dream of the weak. Ranna and her minions corrupt. They find that within you that cares and exploits the caring. They find that which you care for and hurt it, to teach you that caring is a weakness and a liability that never works out well for you. All that you think matters will be torn to pieces in front of your eyes, and you will learn that it was worthless, from its broken pieces. There is only force, and the will of the strongest. The law is simple: She who can crush you is to be feared, obeyed, and heeded. You have no right to anything, including your worthless life. Pray that She does not take it from you.
I think this is a big part of why I love this arc so much. YAFGC began with the difference between "sort of evil" goblins and beholders, and we saw an undermountain realm full of…that which seemed not especially evil, really. We then explored the Drow society under the mountain, and…yes indeed, it was markedly more evil, full of things some of us likely found really problematic…and yet, we still accepted Drow culture as a part of the sociological tapestry of the Mountain. We laughed, we cheered, we connected with Drow characters.
Then came Jone’s arc. Avoiding spoilers, let me simply say that it shook me up a bit, and elements in the arc challenged my ideas of how YAFGC handled evil, in-strip.
And here we are, now, staring down Ranna and her minions. We’ve never seen evil quite like this, in YAFGC before. It’s more than simply broad-reaching and terrible, it’s personally trying to wind its way into the skulls of everyone in the world…sometimes quite literally, in fact…and take away some of who and what they are, change them in demoralizing, violating ways. It’s trying to take away some of the light within them.
This is amazing stuff. I see these arcs as a series of stories of how individuals handle a brush with insidious, epic evil, that which does not simply seek to predate upon them, but unmake them, to varying degree and nature. I want to see my "friends" in-strip reach the morning, and see how much of themselves remains intact from what is, literally and metaphorically, a long, dark night of the soul. Not simply the collective soul, but each individual soul.
This is brilliant stuff. As fatiguing as this arc has been for some, I think it may be so because it’s so heavy, engaging, and laden with meaning. We care, and the danger is so much greater than the simple realities of occupation and torturous ritual deaths.
Brilliant stuff, if heartbreaking to live through with our in-strip friends.
Seeing how by the look of it they were petrified rather than, say, disintegrated? Probably «I don’t trust that snake chick and also will need them later».
Okay, I think they made a mistake honestly. Bob is LITERALLY the only thing that the Rannites should be worried about (especially the Gorgon variety) if he is like ALL other beholders that center eye should be producing an Anti-magic cone effect.
There was a lot of discussion about whether he even has such an effect back when he failed to disable the magical trap holding Gren https://yafgc.net/comic/3034-the-anguish-of-bob/
Things to love about this strip:
– The rhyme in Panel 1.
– The way the focus on Snierr gets tighter as the strip progresses.
– The low/high staging.
– Bob saying "your stupid FACE" like he’s a four-year-old.
t!
Given the title of the chapter I do have the feeling, that Bob will carry out the next task as well. Or at least, will act as if he is doing it. Depending on, how far he is able to think ahead…
I half expect Bob to either zap Meegs and threaten Sneer,er, Snierr to be next or just zap Snierr right on the spot, since he’s emotional in a really bad spot. I can’t blame him, if he’s more than one fuse short.
One thing I’ve noticed that I don’t think anyone has brought up… What happened to Meegs’ familiar? She always had Fluffy with her (presumably) before she became a gorgon and we haven’t seen him once.
I’ve been thinking a lot, and my official prediction is that Bob didn’t vaporize the Bloodhands; he cast Imprison or something similar. Not exactly a fun time, especially for the little ones, but can be undone in due course.
Now Bob should do what he should have done in the first place, and go on a killing spree, starting with Disintegrate on Fugly (Snier) up there, and point the anti-magic cone at Meegs while hitting her with Death Ray.
Of course, that’s all assuming Bob is akin to a traditional early edition D&D Beholder.
One little tidbit… one of the traditional powers of Beholders is Sleep. Glon and company aren’t necessarily dead. Not saying that Bob didn’t kill them, just that there is a possibility he didn’t.
The problem is they have Gren hung up in some dungeon, presumably with a knife to her neck any time Bob gets close.
I don’t think one of Bob’s eye can do Raise Dead, just yet 🙂
And anyway, Rich isn’t beholden to AD&D rules but he seems to be keeping beholders as mostly offensive units with offensive spells. Making them to overpowered erodes the storyline.
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Why are Rannites evil? Because they do bad things. You should know this Bob, you grew up in the Black Mountain.
Love is blind, even for evil.
There is evil and there’s *evil*.
The folks under the Black Mountain were bad, but they were still capable of maintaining a semi-functional society.
In contrast, the Rannites are idiotic users who want to rip the world apart and make it bleed for the greater glory of Ranna.
So there’s a difference. And Bob had to learn it. And now the Rannites need to learn that it is unwise to anger a Beholder by treating him like a mook on a leash.
Lawful Evil versus Chaotic Evil.
Lawful Evil is bad, but they can have a functional society with the necessary rules required so that a society can function, although power and wealth therefore only resides in the hands of the very few, and while there is Law, there is probably little Justice.
Neutral Evil can fake it, and function in Lawful society, if breaking the rules whenever it suits them and they think they can get away with it. An entire Neutral Evil society is debatable, perhaps on a small scale where a few strong leaders can keep relative order, but on a large scale would be too self-serving and unreliable to work.
Chaotic Evil. Some people just want to watch the world burn. This was always a mistake with the original Drow in D&D, a CE society simply cannot exist. There can be a bunch of CE people, but its not a society, its a mad house. It would be anarchy the entire time, everyone for themsleves, with relatively small groups held together by a strong leader that would prey on weaker groups and occasionally fight with other groups (they did kind of portray that with the Drow houses, but it was still far too organized for proper CE). These leaders would have to always be watching their back, because someone is always ready to stick a knife in it so they will be top dog. Honestly, finding a large number of CE people in one place would be unlikely as they would probably kill each other.
Of course in reality, people don’t fit into 9 neat little ethical pigeon holes, you can be a complete psychopath that runs an orderly society (more than a few tyrants have been). And most of any people will fall into some sort of neutral middle ground (I liked the 4th edition Unaligned for that) where they aren’t bad people, or good people, just people that just want to mind their own business and not attract attention to themselves.
Bob: "Thank you. That tells me you will never let me see Gren again, and she is likely dead." And he starts laying waste…
That tells him none of those things. They’ve let him see her before and there’s no reason they cannot do so again, if he "needs" to be motivated.
Even the Rannites are probably not stupid enough to destroy the only thing that keeps him from killing them all.
Indeed, Ørjan, I can’t imagine the Rannites would kill Gren. That which compels a beholder to serve against his will is far too useful to discard, until such time as she no longer serves this purpose.
Even so, I think they just overplayed their hand.
Bob was restraining himself with a supreme effort of will … and now the Rannites are trying to double down. A mistake, I fancy.
I hope you’re right, Aebliss. While I think Bob could take out most Rannites in a ‘fair fight,’ they aren’t really the fighting-fair types…and their goddess is a scary force indeed. I’m not disagreeing, necessarily…just moderating my hopes, and worrying for Bob.
zap her to dust, let the next one take her place and not piss off a beholder with the power to turn you into ashes for not upholding a deal.
"I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further."
"Curse your sudden yet inevitable betrayal!"
Seriously, what did Bob expect to happen?
It seems that beholders in this setting are not all that smart, perhaps because they are so powerful that they got lazy, intellectually. Bob has often shown that he doesn’t really think things through.
But… there are moments when he has been canny like beholders are in canonical fantasy settings.
Which is why if Rich decides that Bob has a trick or three up his sleeve, I can roll with it as much as if he was gullible enough to believe they would uphold their end of the deal.
If *you* expect, after 3252 strips, that Bob will think rationally in this situation, and work every angle out logically like he’s Tommy in Miller’s Crossing, then the problem is not Bob.
t!
Indeed (and so vividly put, to boot!). Bob is rather an innocent, in many ways…and even as I mourn for the choices he’s made, I mourn for what the choices he made must be doing to him.
C’rhynne hated her ultimatum, but chose with her conscience….and chose to remain herself, in the face of horrors. It’s a very debatable point, I grant…but I like to think that she passed the Kobayashi Maru, in the same way that Bob…just failed it.
This is, I think, the true face of Ranna, manifest. The crucifixions and endless night are just set dressing; Ranna and her chosen violate people through carefully-crafted situations in which one is sorely tempted to accept "the lesser of evils," committed personally at cost to the self. The self is slowly eroded, compromised, violated and withered away, one "But it was for the greater good" at a time.
This is going to leave a mark on Bob, and I think he’s one of the souls least ready to carry a wound like this. I mourn.
Yet, from what Rich has said, Bob is not limited to what he can do with his eyes. It’s not just petrification, or blasting to dust. I suspect that Bob is relying on Meegs not knowing just what Beholders can do, and so hoping to bluff Snierr into thinking he did as ordered, and would be able to get Gren released.
This was his way of trying to do what C’rhyyne tried to do. What tripped Bob up, though, was being evil he tried to do the evil thing, thinking that would give him the outcome he wanted. C’rhyyne realized that trying to do evil to placate evil was not going to work, did good and to hell with the consequences. Admittedly, it could very well have worked out for the worse for C’rhyyne and friends, but, thankfully, and thank you Rich, it didn’t.
What Bob’s reaction will be to Snierr will be interesting. And possibly very nasty.
It’s such an insidious game the Rannites play, isn’t it? "Come now, any *reasonable* person can see that the least horrible option is compliance. Your conscience can rest easy; you did the least evil thing, see?" But that’s not the real nature of the game. It’s that they made *you* do it, and the weight of that choice is on *your* conscience…not theirs. It’s the effect that choice will have upon you that’s the real victory. Demoralizing you slowly, as you watch the person you thought you were, dismantled and sold piecemeil in the name of tiny little victories. Tiny victories that, in hindsight, will seem so small, and so meaningless, compared to what they cost.
Then, of course, the Rannites can violate the imagined "deal" that they never truly agreed to honor, at the end…reminding you that you’re the one with those broken ideas like "we had a deal" and "deals are to be honored"…and your ruin, your loss, your problem, boss!
I’m quietly impressed, if horrified, with Ranna’s methods. She is well and truly ideologically evil, and a force of ideological evil. She is there to tell you that "love" is the lie that the weak tell themselves to cover up supplicating dependence on the strength of others, that "law" is simply the will of the strongest in action, and the idea that law binds the strong is a pipe dream of the weak. Ranna and her minions corrupt. They find that within you that cares and exploits the caring. They find that which you care for and hurt it, to teach you that caring is a weakness and a liability that never works out well for you. All that you think matters will be torn to pieces in front of your eyes, and you will learn that it was worthless, from its broken pieces. There is only force, and the will of the strongest. The law is simple: She who can crush you is to be feared, obeyed, and heeded. You have no right to anything, including your worthless life. Pray that She does not take it from you.
I think this is a big part of why I love this arc so much. YAFGC began with the difference between "sort of evil" goblins and beholders, and we saw an undermountain realm full of…that which seemed not especially evil, really. We then explored the Drow society under the mountain, and…yes indeed, it was markedly more evil, full of things some of us likely found really problematic…and yet, we still accepted Drow culture as a part of the sociological tapestry of the Mountain. We laughed, we cheered, we connected with Drow characters.
Then came Jone’s arc. Avoiding spoilers, let me simply say that it shook me up a bit, and elements in the arc challenged my ideas of how YAFGC handled evil, in-strip.
And here we are, now, staring down Ranna and her minions. We’ve never seen evil quite like this, in YAFGC before. It’s more than simply broad-reaching and terrible, it’s personally trying to wind its way into the skulls of everyone in the world…sometimes quite literally, in fact…and take away some of who and what they are, change them in demoralizing, violating ways. It’s trying to take away some of the light within them.
This is amazing stuff. I see these arcs as a series of stories of how individuals handle a brush with insidious, epic evil, that which does not simply seek to predate upon them, but unmake them, to varying degree and nature. I want to see my "friends" in-strip reach the morning, and see how much of themselves remains intact from what is, literally and metaphorically, a long, dark night of the soul. Not simply the collective soul, but each individual soul.
This is brilliant stuff. As fatiguing as this arc has been for some, I think it may be so because it’s so heavy, engaging, and laden with meaning. We care, and the danger is so much greater than the simple realities of occupation and torturous ritual deaths.
Brilliant stuff, if heartbreaking to live through with our in-strip friends.
Seeing how by the look of it they were petrified rather than, say, disintegrated? Probably «I don’t trust that snake chick and also will need them later».
Okay, I think they made a mistake honestly. Bob is LITERALLY the only thing that the Rannites should be worried about (especially the Gorgon variety) if he is like ALL other beholders that center eye should be producing an Anti-magic cone effect.
There was a lot of discussion about whether he even has such an effect back when he failed to disable the magical trap holding Gren https://yafgc.net/comic/3034-the-anguish-of-bob/
Things to love about this strip:
– The rhyme in Panel 1.
– The way the focus on Snierr gets tighter as the strip progresses.
– The low/high staging.
– Bob saying "your stupid FACE" like he’s a four-year-old.
t!
The slow resolve from Dutch angle, too! This is comic cinematography!
"I’m shocked, shocked to find that there is gambling going….er, that Rannites can’t be trusted!"
" Rannites, so predictably treacherous ". I’ll bet Bob has predicted it to
Given the title of the chapter I do have the feeling, that Bob will carry out the next task as well. Or at least, will act as if he is doing it. Depending on, how far he is able to think ahead…
I half expect Bob to either zap Meegs and threaten Sneer,er, Snierr to be next or just zap Snierr right on the spot, since he’s emotional in a really bad spot. I can’t blame him, if he’s more than one fuse short.
Looks like Meegs now has competition as to whom Bob zaps next.
He’s got a lot of eyes.
Meanwhile, back at the Bloodhands rock garden…
One thing I’ve noticed that I don’t think anyone has brought up… What happened to Meegs’ familiar? She always had Fluffy with her (presumably) before she became a gorgon and we haven’t seen him once.
I’ve been thinking a lot, and my official prediction is that Bob didn’t vaporize the Bloodhands; he cast Imprison or something similar. Not exactly a fun time, especially for the little ones, but can be undone in due course.
This is what is known as "Signing your own Death Warrant", AKA "Beholder Baiting"
Trifle not with the many eyed ones.
By the way, what happened to the Beholder King when black mountain got rubbled? He was presumably still asleep from his battle with Lolth.
And this would surprise Bob… why?
Now Bob should do what he should have done in the first place, and go on a killing spree, starting with Disintegrate on Fugly (Snier) up there, and point the anti-magic cone at Meegs while hitting her with Death Ray.
Of course, that’s all assuming Bob is akin to a traditional early edition D&D Beholder.
One little tidbit… one of the traditional powers of Beholders is Sleep. Glon and company aren’t necessarily dead. Not saying that Bob didn’t kill them, just that there is a possibility he didn’t.
> And this would surprise Bob… why?
Oh, god, another one.
t!
The problem is they have Gren hung up in some dungeon, presumably with a knife to her neck any time Bob gets close.
I don’t think one of Bob’s eye can do Raise Dead, just yet 🙂
And anyway, Rich isn’t beholden to AD&D rules but he seems to be keeping beholders as mostly offensive units with offensive spells. Making them to overpowered erodes the storyline.
Bob isn't the smartest, but surely even *he* ought to have seen this coming.